1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a knowledge information processing system, and more particularly to a knowledge information processing system which is adapted to efficiently acquiring knowledge and to debugging thereof.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Accompanying the development in the computers and in the peripheral technology thereof, more attention has now been given to storing knowledge to a computer to utilize it. This fact can also be implied from such words as AI (artificial intelligence), knowledge engineering, expert system and like words, that are giving serious impact upon the world in recent years.
Systems that treat information called knowledge, such as expert systems and like systems, have generally been referred to as knowledge information processing systems. It has been said that three large problems, i.e., knowledge representation, knowledge acquisition and knowledge utilization, have to be solved to put these systems into practice.
As for the knowledge acquisition, a variety of knowledge base editors have been described in Nikkei Electronics, "Comparison of Tools for Developing Expert Systems that have been successively placed in the market", Nov. 4, 1985, pp. 153-175.
According to the knowledge acquisition method that pertains to the above conventional technology, no consideration has been given with regard to justification and consistency of the contents of knowledge acquired. Therefore, the user is required to manually confirm the knowledge base to make sure that there exists no error, and is further required to detect a bug.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 167771/1984 discloses a method of acquiring production rule from the experts. According to this method, however, no consideration has been given to acquiring knowledge other than the causality, and the field of application is greatly limited.